On Tap Guidelines for Small Finance Banks

After a successful review of the performance of the existing Small Finance Banks (‘SFBs’) and with a view to encourage competition in the expansion of banking services through the use of high technology-low cost operations, the Reserve Bank of India (‘RBI’) introduced the draft guidelines for ‘On Tap’ licensing of SFBs on 13 September 2019 and had also invited comments of stakeholders and members of the public.

With this ‘On Tap’ facility and an explicit policy to extend selected services to the unserved sections of the population in India, the RBI will now accept applications and grant licenses for SFBs throughout the year, in contrast to the erstwhile guidelines (released on 27 November 2014) for licensing of SFBs in the private sector, where the application window was open until 16 January 2015.

The draft guidelines provide a robust framework which will definitely ease and streamline the application process for eligible players, looking at setting up SFBs.

BDO in India presents, ‘On Tap Guidelines for Small Finance Banks’, highlighting some of the key requirements for setting up the SFBs.

We hope you have an insightful read.